Audiobooks and the car: I've driven thirty thousand miles in the last three years while listening to books. The experience of a novel at 70 miles per hour on a highway is genuinely different from the experience of a novel in a chair. The movement synchronizes with the narrative movement in a way I find productive for certain kinds of books.

What works best for me in the car: anything with narrative momentum, including thrillers, mysteries, and epic fantasy. What doesn't work: anything with dense lyric prose that I need to slow down for. The audiobook of Blood Meridian was a mistake. I listened to thirty minutes and pulled over.

The books I associate most strongly with specific drives are lodged in memory differently from books I read at home. There's a stretch of interstate highway that I associate permanently with Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. I cannot drive it without hearing the narration.